Hear/Say

Went to a book expo today– we got overwhelmed when people started crowding about for this famous monk to come in for a book signing, so we left. There were a serious number of shaved heads bobbing throughout the crowd. I have an urge to  slap the freshly bic’d surfaces, but I am sure God, Allah, Buddha, or maybe all three would shaft me with a lightening bolt as soon as I indulged this guilty pleasure.

Chinese New Year has been a good experience. My father isn’t one for glorious parades, ‘ceremony’, or participating in prescribed ‘fun’ unless it involves computers or cooking, so it’s not like we went and watched some intense martial drumming or a herd of people in dragon costumes. Instead, we had a pretty lame dinner with my third aunt and uncle to appease my aunt’s nagging expectations of lavishing relations with riches you’ve earned where I sat there with some kind of stomach virus that made me want to vomit all over her fake velvet ill-fitting mandarin dress. She wore these pants– they look like ski pants– under it because Taiwanese people feel cold in 70 degree weather. Her face was unusually oily that evening. I could almost see my reflection on her t-zone. Everything after that got better.

That night I had a fever and there was a nonstop riot of fireworks and firecrackers from midnight to the late A.M. The following day we went to an all-you-can-eat buffet, and I swallowed smoked salmon rolls by the dish.

Nightmarkets are crowded and usually more so because the old have hobbled out of their homes and into streets, along with fussy women with their babies and their baby carriages, or dogs in faux-baby-carriages that are meant for dogs. Despite this, everyone is in high spirits, and my dad gets out of a traffic ticket by wishing the cop a happy new year. We save 20 US dollars.

Enough. Here are some pictures I have taken in Taipei. Enjoy, or else.

This is the skin/meat off of a pig’s face. Found in a southern Taipei market for new year delicacies and cuisine of northern China.

A giant piece of dried fish three.25 X the size of my face.

That dark pile of horror is fried hearts. Probably of pig. I don’t know. I don’t know.

A temple, decked out with lanterns. My dad and his “skater” hat, which incidentally also features misc. argyle patterns and scrawled shapes of diamonds.

A street in Luzhou, a city right outside the actual city of Taipei. It’s in “NEW TAIPEI” County.

This is where all the good guns go when they die. Gun heaven. No pearly gates.

A view from my terrace. Sunset lighting, with my mini eiffel towers.

A scary, big, black deity. This is a larger than life puppet; someone is meant to go into it (you see the hole) and walk around, scaring the shit out of everyone.

This is a giant parking lot. You don’t drive into it, though: they have three or four mini ferris wheel sort of things that place your parked car on a shelf at the bottom and rotate to the next ‘parking shelf’ for the next car.

A wrecked building, sweet!

The ground, scorched from firecrackers

Sux.

This is a picture of a car, graffiti’d and left on the street. I thought: wow. this is sumthin’ else.

As Arthur would say/sing: Having fun isn’t hard/ If you’ve got a library card!

E… voile.